Find your color palette with this simple trick

How can you tell what color of clothes look good with your skin and hair color?

The old school – and easier- way to get into learn about the best colors for your is to determine your undercolor. There’s a trick to find out if your complexion has warm (yellow), cool (pink) or neutral undertones: What you must do is to look at the veins in your wrist—if they appear blue or purple, you’re cool; green or olive, you’re warm and if they’re a mix of both, you’re neutral.

This image is from a Target’s post about how to find your best makeup foundation, and it works wonders to explain color theory.

You must know that your skin color are one of the factors, but it has to be analyzed with your hair and eye color (and even how your skin react to sunlight exposition) as well.

Let me explain it using famous people as examples of this.

While Jennifer Lopez has darker skin tone than Jessica Chastain, both have warm undertones because the combination of their eye color and hair color tend to be warmer than cooler. But, for example, Lupita Nyong’o, who has a deep dark skin tone is, actually, on the cool undertones. That is why she looks amazing when she wears pale blue, emerald or white, for example (check her looks here: Lupita Nyong’o). Or when she goes for a typical warm color on a cooler shade, like neon orange instead of brown orange.

Jessica Chastain looking great on a golden night gown

So, once you get a clue on the undertone, you can start doing some experiments with clothes and deciding from there which colors work better for you or whoever is trying to know the best palette for her/him.

If you like a color you don’t like how looks on you, opt for wearing that color on your bottom half, not so close to your face, so it do not overwhelm your frame.

Using the color wheel as a guide, you can find the best combinations and contrast for clothes, makeup and accessories.

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Also, you can use a bit of technology too: I would recommend the Color View Finder app, which help you to find out the exact colors that appear in any image you analyze. This way, you can do some research over pictures, sceneries or clothes combinations you find inspirational for your own look, or even get a more analytic review of what colors can work better on your own selection of clothes when you set your daily outfit. As a bonus, I would recommend to keep the pictures of your favorite combinations, so you can repeat or do some variations over the same color scheme.

This question was submited at Quora and I answered it there and here. You can find me at Quora and, also, share this posts in your social media channels.